The LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2: Meet the Talent Behind the Video Game panel happened earlier today at San Diego Comic Con 2017 and there were tons of new information about the game that was exclusively revealed. The panel consisted of Arthur Parsons (head of design, TT Games), Bill Rosemann (executive creative director, Marvel Games), Justin Ramsden (designer, LEGO), Kurt Busiek (comics writer, Avengers Forever), and Dan Veesenmeyer (comic content artist, and LEGO Marvel’s Avengers) with Ryan Penagos serving as a moderator. I was live-tweeting the panel and it was hard to keep up with all the info they gave but I survived it and here’s a recap of what happened.
One thing that was touched on before the new trailer was the different versions of the same character will be able to team up which means that Spider-Man Noir can team up with the normal Spider-Man if you desire. Then they dropped the new trailer on us which Arthur says the public can expect it to go live on Monday. keep watch for Rocket Raccoon with chicken blasters.
Dan talked about recreating the Kang Dynasty storyline cover, written by Kurt Busiek, and turning it into LEGO form. A copy of this LEGO cover was given out to each person in the audience which has a nice shiny gold foil in various parts. Arthur also added that you will be able to collect these classic comic book covers in the game via minikits.
Vehicles will be making a return as there were a few that were revealed at the panel. We were able to see the Black Panther Jet, Crossbones’ Truck, and a Mini Ravager Jet.
Next up was what everyone has been waiting for, the new character reveals. There was the Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming, Doctor Octopus, Cosmo, Greenskyn Smashtroll, Throg, Forbush Man, Howard the Duck, Iron Duck, and Gwenpool. Regarding Cosmo, Arthur said there is an epic part of the game two-thirds of the way through that involves him. There was also Ravonna Renslayer that appeared just for a few seconds in the trailer. You’ll have to see it to find her.
There are over 200 playable characters that will be in this game and one of them will be the iconic Stan Lee. He returns again in the sequel but will be in peril again. If you are able to rescue him, you will be rewarded handsomely. Although there are over 200+ characters, none of them involves Fox franchises, mainly X-Men.
There will be no console exclusive characters so that means that all platforms will have the same playable characters unlike in the first game which angered many fans.
There were also bonus missions in the game as well. One of them involves Howard the Duck trying to pitch his video game idea to the devs at Chrono Con which is basically a gaming convention.
During the Q&A part of the panel, there were some good questions that were asked. One was about the new abilities and mechanics. Arthur didn’t go into too much detail but he said there were 96 different mechanics available. One of which is Kamala Khan who can shrink down in size and do mazes.
One child asked if Moon Knight will be appearing in the game. Arthur didn’t remember if he was or not but he’ll make sure that he will be in it.
One last thing that was that was mentioned was Mysterio battling the Sinister Six in one part of the game.
There were also ticketed giveaways at the panel for the attendees which include the foil comic print of Kang Dynasty. They also had the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes The Avengers Quinjet (30304) which was from the Age of Ultron sets from 2015. This polybag was fairly rare as it wasn’t that widely available at the time.
Stay tuned as I try to edit and transcribe my developer interview with Arthur Parsons. It’ll be a few days as I will be pretty busy after SDCC ends tomorrow.
Looks/sounds cool! but I hate the new Vulture wings so much, they should’ve kept the design from the Beware the Vulture set (but maybe those were too big idk)
Hang on, are these goofy characters pictured above Lego originals or actual comic book characters?
Allen actually has the names linked to the Marvel wiki if you’re interested.
…These are things that I can never un-see.
Original Thor Frog issues were classics. Though admittedly I haven’t read them in years to see if they truly hold up.
It’s a good thing that Throg wasn’t the SDCC exclusive. If I
had to listen to some kid who wasn’t even born when the original Thor/frog
issues were published, tell me that figure ‘Wasn’t meant for me” I think the
shear backwardness of it would have made the universe turn inside out.
Throg has a frog head. There are no frog-headed minifigs to draw that from (especially none that are wearing a winged helmet). He’s probably safe. I was actually thinking Iron Duck would have been a much better pick for SDCC since it appears he’ll feature heavily in the upcoming game, but then I remembered that Iron Duck is wearing a helmet that’s not something you can just paint onto Donald’s’ head. Deadpool Duck doesn’t require any new molds. Throg and Iron Duck do.
We’re going to be making fun of that whole mess for a while now. I wonder if the joke will survive until the next con exclusive figures
So let’s see if I got this straight. Back in late 2014 or early 2015, they introduced an alt-universe Gwen Stacy, who, instead of being a long-rotted corpse, got bitten by the radioactive spider, and instead of being a long-rotted glowing corpse, she became SpiderGwen. This proved popular, and as a result, all of the Marvel titles were made to produce alternate covers featuring (very specifically) Gwen Stacy as various other Marvel superheroes. In June 2015, one of these stunt covers featured an amalgam of Gwen Stacy (a Sony character) and Deadpool (a Fox character) on the cover of a Deadpool comic book. Even being limited to a single cover image, she proved popular, and people cos-played as Gwenpool. Marvel writers noticed this, and made a character based on that cover image. This time, however, she’s neither Gwen Stacy nor Deadpool, and is instead Gwen Poole, a non-powered person from our world who got sucked into Marvel’s comic book world. So, not a mutant. And her first story was in Howard the Duck, which is still in the Marvel stable. But in spite of that, her visual design is based on Deadpool’s costume, and her first appearance was on a Deadpool cover. Shouldn’t that still make her at least partly owned by Fox? And wouldn’t that then mean that this game isn’t completely devoid of Fox-owned characters?
Fox and Sony own nothing but the movie rights. Anything that happens in the comics is out of their domain. Only reason Spiderman is now in the Marvel cinamatic universe is because Sony wised up and realized it was to everyone’s benefit to make a deal and play nice in the sand box.
The other irony is that a lot of other marvel properties movie rights were in the hand of other studios. Fortunately for Disney, those companies (who are in the movie business) couldn’t figure out how to make good superhero movies. And because the contracts are set up that they have keep making movies or lose the rights, the rights ultimately moved back to Disney.
If Deadpool and Logan are any indication, Marvel will never get the rights back for the X-Men. FF they might keep tied up just to thumb their nose back at Marvel over the embargo on merchandising rights. Universal will probably retain rights to Hulk without actually making any Hulk movies by virtue of whatever deal they worked out to allow Marvel to build him (and the second movie) into the MCU. Sony has apparently laid another egg with Homecoming (worst Friday-to-Friday drop of any movie in the MCU), and they’ve been sandbagged with the announcement that any Venom/Carnage movie won’t be part of the MCU, but I don’t think that will stop them from continuing to make movies.
Personally, I’d like to see Sony, Fox, and Universal band together to start making movies based on the original 2099 titles. Sony should have Spiderman 2099 rights, Fox should have X-Men 2099 and Doom 2099, and Universal should have Hulk 2099. Marvel would own the rights to Punisher 2099, Ghost Rider 2099, and Ravage 2099, but all of the most popular characters would be split between the other three studios.
Yeah, my understanding of those agreements were they have to make movies every X amount of years or revert. It’s pretty crazy that Marvel would have signed anything that said that agreement lasts forever (forever is a pretty long time). However idiotic, I’d believe it though seeing as (at the time) most superhero franchises flamed out pretty quickly.
Yeah. I got that. But they can’t use any of the Fox movie characters in these games because Marvel’s contract with Fox was written when they were dirt-po’, and they had to protect their interests by including a clause that allows them to nix any merchandising deal that they feel is harmful to the IP. And now that Disney owns Marvel, they just set a brick on the little red button that kills any Fox merchandising proposals.
However (and this is a very big however), Marvel’s hands are also tied from their end. They can make a comic book game and include _EVERYTHING_ from the comic books and it’s no big deal. If they base the game around the MCU, all of the characters that they no longer own the movie rights to (or have an arrangement for, since they also don’t own the movie rights to Hulk) are off limits. So, absolutely no Mutants or Fantastic Four in the LEGO Avengers game.
And the way the movie rights work is that if a character is introduced in an X-title, or is labelled a Mutant within the Marvel comics, Fox inherits the movie rights to that character without even lifting a finger. There’s a ban on introducing new characters in any of the X-titles, and they cancelled Fantastic Four outright because they don’t want to give any more freebies to Fox. They’d rather tank the IP just enough that Fox stops making movies and lets the movie rights lapse, _then_ start churning out bland MCU movies based around those characters.
Now, Fox did work a deal with Marvel somewhat like the one that Sony did, except that Fox had First Class and Days of Future Past under their belt so they were negotiating from a stronger position. What they ended up agreeing to was that the MCU could use Ego the Living Planet (part of the FF bundle, I believe) for GotG2, while Fox could completely make up a new power set for Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
So, getting back to the question at hand, if they’re pointedly omitting any Fox-owned characters, Gwenpool was pointedly created as an amalgam of a Sony character and a Fox character, but then retconned to be unrelated to either of them. Does Fox have any sort of claim on her? Although, I guess if Kang falls under Fox’ FF deal, they probably aren’t under any contractual restrictions that would prevent them from using anyone they felt like.
Yeah, it’s really confusing and quite a mess. Sounds like you have a better handle on it than I do.
It just sounds really weird to say ‘Fox owned’, or ‘Sony owned’ since they don’t really own anything but certain rights.
Apparently Kang the Conqueror himself is Fox owned as well.
Wondering why the Comic cover hasn’t been listed on eBay… would like to a copy.
We had to go to another location to pick it up. I’m figuring that people were too lazy to go over and get it.
I’m reasonably excited about the second game. I’m playing the first right now and it’s fun enough.